


luminance

by monograph



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Established Relationship, Fluff without Plot, M/M, Slice of Life, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, a day in the life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:26:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27428635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monograph/pseuds/monograph
Summary: One day when he doesn't have much to do, Jisung chases a ray of light that fell on Minho's face, and concludes that he is very much in love with Minho.(he knew that already, of course, but he ruminates about it in detail because he is sentimental like that.)
Relationships: Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know
Comments: 21
Kudos: 107





	luminance

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this to experiment with my writing style, so this doesn't have a plot and doesn't follow any structure. What it does have is a lot of tooth rooting sappiness and cheesiness. I may or may not have flinched at the sheer amount of sappiness while writing. 
> 
> Still, I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> This is a small playlist of songs I listened to while writing.

One Saturday afternoon, Jisung debates the relative merits and pitfalls of a third cup of coffee vs. herbal tea when Minho enters the kitchen and the light from the window hits him just so.

The same light that was a mere spot of warmth on his face when he had entered five minutes ago is a burst of inspiration on Minho’s face. Jisung forgets the coffee vs. tea debate as Minho strides towards him, the beam of light slipping lower and lower down his body and then disappearing when he stands a step away from Jisung.

“My friend sent me photos of a new place she found near here,” Minho announces, waving the phone in front of Jisung’s face but not really giving him an opportunity to look at it. “It looks interesting, we should go.”

Jisung is still thinking about how the patch of light had looked on the side of Minho’s face. Golden and radiant, all characteristics of light, of course, but it had illuminated Minho’s face in a way that has left Jisung breathless.

“Okay, sure. What does it serve?” Jisung asks after taking a moment to clear his throat.

“It serves some experimental stuff, it seems. Sounds interesting,” Minho replies as he bypasses Jisung and picks up an orange from a bowl that sits on the counter. “Thanks by the way.” He smiles, orange held in one hand, thumb of his free hand digging into the top. “I like our last minute dates.”

Jisung grins too because it is impossible not to when Minho’s smile unfurls like that. It feels like they’re sharing a secret that’s golden and as delicate as a hummingbird that subsists on nectar and a fluttering heart. “Me too.”

There’s a spray of fine mist when Minho’s thumb pierces the orange’s skin. The smell of it wafts in the space between them. Jisung watches Minho peel the orange with deft fingers. He halves the fruit and offers it to Jisung.

“We’ll leave at seven?” Minho asks. His hand lingers on Jisung’s hand for a few seconds, and there’s a burst of warmth on Jisung’s palm and his stomach.

“Okay,” Jisung says, accepting a kiss along with the fruit. He’ll have an orange instead of coffee then.

───────

Light, orange and Minho’s smile run on a loop around Jisung’s brain as he gets back to work, orange seeds in the bin and its scent permeating his skin. It’s not the worst thing to have swirling through his brain, but it is distracting. Especially since Minho is leaning against the other arm of the sofa, knees folded and ice cold toes brushing against Jisung’s ankle every now and then as if providing a subconscious reminder that he’s right there.

There’s a cloudburst of ideas in his mind: that singular bar of light on Minho’s face, the way it bounced off his cheekbones and highlighted shades of brown in his hair. It isn’t anything special, but it’s like a brick to his chest. By chancing to fall on his face, the light is illuminating the strength of what he feels for Minho, and that is vaguely terrifying even though it is his own. Even though he had known, and it really isn’t a surprise. 

He wonders if there’s an unexplained shiver crawling up Minho’s spine at being the focus of Jisung’s thoughts. He peeks and finds Minho glowering at his laptop.

The scent of orange is so strong like this; when he’s rubbing his lips, gaze focusing on the way Minho is sighing now, and the wrinkle between his brows. And he is so enamored with the way Minho had looked with the sunlight on his face and mist in front of his face. Jisung’s ideas tug him towards a direction that he had not planned to traverse, but he follows. He unwraps the string of his notebook, and opens it to a fresh page.

The words don’t come easily. Sometimes he thinks that he is good with words because he is an auditory learner, and because he has always liked to listen. He likes listening to his friends, to his parents, to the people he works with, likes to commit their cadences and tones to his memory. It seemed like an act of love to know the peculiarities of someone’s speech.

But with Minho, it’s images that are bright and crystalline, and it is difficult to find words that describe it in ways that will leave him satisfied. “This is just a draft,” he reminds himself as he takes off the cap from his pen, “I can make changes later.”

He presses his pen on page, watches a dot of ink bloom on paper. He presses his pen down and begins writing.

Even before he completes the second stanza, he knows that it will never see the light of day. It is too intimate, has too much of himself threaded through it. Writing itself feels like he’s walking into a field illuminated by floodlights with an audience watching his every move. Far beyond the property of being made visible by light, his affection is being excavated. He breathes and looks up.

Minho’s eyes are on him and his ears flush when Jisung meets his gaze. “You caught me,” Minho laughs, but it is couched in embarrassment. “You’re adorable when you’re concentrating on something.”

Heat rises on Jisung’s cheeks too, and he sputters, trying to hide it. Sometimes, he’s still startled by the way Minho’s eyes and face become alight with affection when Jisung does things that aren’t even worth consideration. “I was just working,” he whines, unsure of how to respond.

The half blank, half blue page of his notebooks feels like a tattletale. Or a mirror at the hairdresser’s. Too revealing. He drapes an arm over it.

Minho’s smile curves up at the corners. “Yes,” he says.

Jisung chooses one of his most frequent grumblings. “I don’t understand you, hyung, you’re being opaque on purpose.” This is where Minho invites himself to tickle Jisung, but today he satisfies himself with a gentle stomp to Jisung’s foot.

“What are you working on?” he asks. The light in their living room is gloomy because the windows face another building. Minho rests his chin on the edge of his closed laptop which is cradled against his chest.

The page rasps under his hand. “A very rough draft.” _About light that fell on you_ is a kernel he tucks away, unsaid. He rubs his nose, pen bumping against his cheek, and only smells his skin. “It’s uh – sappy.”

Minho eyes crinkle with mirth. “You’re always so sentimental, Jisungie,” he teases, and laughs when Jisung sticks his tongue out.

“How’s the unsentimental transcription that you’re working on going, hyung?” He’s playing with the pen, and its ink is staining his fingers. It registers only as an impression and not as a realization. Minho’s hair is so dark in this grayness. He can’t look away.

“Horrible. Listening to your own voice is _weird.”_ Minho clicks his tongue. “I never realized that my voice goes so soft sometimes. I can’t hear what I’m saying!”

It does when Minho is really invested in something. His voice tapers to mumbles if he is working alone, and creates a bubble if he is working with someone. That’s what he had sounded like when he helped Jisung extract files from his laptop after the screen had blanked just before a deadline. Jisung had wanted to kiss him a lot back then, but hadn’t.

Jisung’s voice cracks in the middle when he says, “I was just thinking about voices, too.”

Minho looks delighted as he always does when this happens. A jinx, in a sense. He’d said once that he liked when he found both similarities and differences in their conversation or thinking. _“It feels richer that way. Like there’s more to it than just an exchange of information,”_ he’d said.

It’s funny, Minho is just as sentimental as him. The difference is, he isn’t that open about it.

“I like voices,” he adds and it sounds lame, but his stomach is in knots. “I was thinking about how familiar voices soothe me.”

“You _do_ study voices as a part of your coursework.” Minho tilts his head. “so it’s great that you like them. It’s difficult to study things you’re not really interested in.”

The words come easily to him then. “I love your voice,” he says. They don’t say everything, but they say enough. There’s not much space between him and Minho as they sit on two ends of the sofa. There’s no way it’ll get distorted, not with the way whatever is on the page is written on Jisung’s face too. “I like it when it goes soft like you described. It’s probably annoying for you while transcribing, but I love it.”

Minho blinks and then his eyes widen. Jisung leans forward and cradles Minho’s cheeks to fluster him. “So pretty~” he tries to coo, but it is half serious, or maybe wholly serious, and Minho’s mouth is on his. The laptop is warm, annoying and digs uncomfortably into Jisung’s stomach. Paper crinkles beneath his hand.

Jisung shuts his notebook and drops it on the ground. He watches the side of Minho’s face when he leans down and gently places his laptop on the ground and pats it. Then Minho is in his arms again, and warmth surrounds him as Minho kisses him.

It’s a good thing that Jisung is silenced, because he finds that the familiar words have expanded, and he can’t say them out loud when he is reeling like this.

───────

Minho wanders off to his bedroom to work on his research transcripts. Jisung picks up his notebook again, smooths the wrinkles on the page he was writing on. The words are the same, but his eyes are different.

The things that he is now finding about himself were probably deeply rooted for a long time.

He bites his lips as he considers the words. They’re not… revealing, not really. Y _our warmth is what I seek in a storm_ is cheesy and doesn’t really say, _you make me feel the safest when there’s a storm in my mind._ But Jisung knows and he cannot show it to anyone for fear that he would combust. No doubt about it.

He continues writing timidly, pen held loose and strokes lighter. It doesn’t help the heat in his cheeks and neck. He wants to cry. His words stutter even on page, and he curls smaller and smaller the more he tries to materialize what he has seen in his mind’s eye.

He finishes it half an hour later and slams his notebook shut.

───────

Minho takes out a couple of oranges just as Jisung is eating the last of their lunch. Jisung arches a brow because the fruit bowl didn’t have that many of them in the morning.

“Oh, my parents sent over a huge box.” This orange’s skin is tougher than the one Minho had peeled earlier. “I stored it in one of the bottom shelves.” There’s no spray this time, but Jisung is close enough that he can smell it. “My parents think that fruits are the most important things on earth.”

Jisung nods, watches Minho’s fingers flex. He accepts the pieces that are handed over to him. “So do you. You are the one who always remembers to buy fruits,” he says, for himself more than to draw Minho’s attention to it.

Minho hands him a few more slices. “Yeah. You’d die of scurvy otherwise.”

The orange is sweet. Minho’s parents have an uncanny eye for the best produce, which Minho has also inherited. Jisung hadn’t known that he knows why Minho is always able to pick out the best stuff. “Thank you. But I have higher chances of dying of over-consumption of coffee.”

“Then you deserve it,” Minho huffs as if he doesn’t drink just as much as coffee as Jisung.

Jisung doesn’t call him out on it, however, because Minho always gives him a cup when he makes a fresh pot. “I’ll haunt you. I think I’ll make a spiffy ghost.”

Minho makes an amused sound. “It won’t affect me at all. You wail, scream and walk about during odd hours of the night anyway.”

“All I heard is that you’ll keep me around even if I was a ghost.” Jisung pops another piece into his mouth. A handful of orange slices, his boyfriend next to him, and dirty dishes in front of him is all Jisung needs to melt with contentment, apparently. “Same goes for you by the way.”

“In life and in death, huh?” He says then falls abruptly quite.

Jisung does too. He has always found it odd to speak about long stretches of time, and of faraway specks in the future. It either feels like he’s overstepping his boundaries, or he is dooming himself to never experience it. “Ghost life!” he says in his best dude-bro voice and flashes a peace sign.

It breaks the tension, but does nothing to the half formed, dangerous yearning that is twining with his heart-strings.

───────

There’s a presence behind his back. “You look really cute when you decide to use your brains and think for once.” The breath of Minho’s laugh washes over his ear.

Jisung’s thoughts dissolve and he gazes over his shoulder at Minho as he waits for the present to come into focus again. Minho is wearing an elegant coat and a teasing smile. He brushes against Jisung’s arm as he comes to stand in front of him.

The insult registers. “You’re a menace,” Jisung grumbles, unable to stop a smile. He is trying to glare, but goes cross-eyed when Minho kisses him. The thrill of kissing Minho is a sudden blaze, and his heart is hummingbird fast.

“We should leave,” he whispers when Minho brushes his nose against his, lashes fluttering over the top of his cheekbones, “I’m hungry.”

Minho steps back with a laugh and Jisung grabs his wrist before he loses the warmth of his presence. “Shall we go?” Minho tilts his head, and the light in the entryway hits his eyes. 

Jisung tightens his scarf with his free hand as he steps out of the building. The sky is darkening, and the horizon wears a thin strip of pink and purple in memory of the sun. The noise of traffic is bracing, a symbol of life that exists beyond their bubble. It soothes him in a way he can’t explain.

Instead of trying to make sense of it, “I’m in a _mood_ today,” he tells Minho. “I don’t know. I feel like everything is a little too big.” He maneuvers him away from a sea of pedestrians, as Minho tries to figure out the route with the help of his phone map.

“This way,” Minho points ahead. “In a bad way or a good way? The everything being too big thing.”

The street lights are already switched on and their pools of light converge with the last sunlight that falls on the roads. “I’m just feeling a lot – it’s a day with too many _big_ feelings,” he says wryly after they have walked some ways.

“Is it overwhelming?”

Is it? It’s not like he can control its constant rush, but that’s not a problem to be worried about. It’s actually a pretty nice problem to have. He sighs. “I think it was… always there. In the periphery?” They stop at a pedestrian crossing. “But I suppose I didn’t expect it to hit on a random Saturday.”

The light is red. Fear mounts its usual steps: he has said too much too soon; he is burdening Minho with the weight of his feelings. He tries to push it to the corners of his mind with an imaginary broomstick. “I mean –”

Minho hums in thought. “Maybe you finally got time to work it out?” A breeze ruffles his hair, makes it flop over his forehead.

Jisung is charmed by the wind teasing through Minho’s hair. He is so obvious, he doesn’t understand how he was once oblivious to how he felt about Minho. “No, I was enlightened today.” He hides a smile at the private joke. “This day threw light on how much I felt.”

“What is it about?” Minho asks, starting to walk. He has to raise his voice because the impatient rumbling and honking of vehicles beyond the procession of pedestrians threatens to drown it.

Jisung darts his gaze to the side. “It’s actually not that...” a shrug, “you’ll laugh if you heard it.”

“Sungie, I’m always laughing at you because you’re a mess.” There’s a blip of worry in Minho’s voice, but otherwise there’s only fondness. “But you know you can talk to me.”

Jisung is sentimental, and it spills beyond what he writes and into his life. No, it is the other way around. Sometimes he is embarrassed by his naivete and sometimes he argues with himself, asks why he calls it naivete. Maybe he _is_ naive, but he thinks he manages it well. Tries to.

“Yeah, okay,” he says as an answer to Minho’s expectant silence. He clears his throat. “I just love you a lot.”

A car screams past them, the sound of its horn dispersing like smoke. Jisung plucks at the lint in the pocket of his coat, and studies the ankles of a man walking in front of him. His cheeks prickle. “You know um – a lot.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that,” Minho replies, “I was wondering what all your ‘I love yous’ and staring with cow eyes, and general embarrassing affection meant.” He squeezes Jisung’s fingers when he tries to pull away in a huff. “Thank you for clarifying it. It’s good to know that I’m not the only one.”

Jisung rolls his eyes, but he is endeared by this response. It’s as _Minho_ as it can be. “I don’t know if you got the memo, but being tsundere is going out of fashion.”

Minho gasps. “Are you calling my personality a phase?”

“You said it, not me.” Jisung yelps when Minho harshly pinches his cheek. He flushes when he notices a few lingering stares. Huddling closer to Minho, he lowers his voice, “I just realized that I love you really deeply. I don’t have the proper words to say it out loud, though I did write lyrics that will make me cringe tomorrow...”

Another pedestrian crossing. There are a lot of better places to pour his heart out, but with Minho, it is easy to fall into their own world. “But today I realized that I love you very, very much.” He brushes hair off his forehead. “Was nice to feel that.”

Minho’s mouth is open. He shuffles in place, then straightens his scarf. “Like I said,” his expression softens, “I’m glad that I’m not the only one. Glad that it’s reciprocated.”

His skin warms from the top of his head to the back of his neck. There’s a sentence in his notebook with two thick lines crossing over it. _My heart is a sun when I'm with you._ There’s a note beside it: _too much, yuck_.

This is too much, but with the warmth he’s feeling, it turns out that it’s true.

Jisung shakes it off. Laughs and tweaks Minho’s nose. “Good to know. Now let’s go eat.”

───────

Minho sulks as they leave the cheerful, crowded facade of the restaurant behind. “I should’ve called ahead and reserved a seat. I’m sorry.”

Jisung frowns as someone knocks against his shoulder. He smooths his brow as he answers, “it’s okay, we can go to that place near our flat.” People have filled the streets to the brim, and everything is ablaze with light and noise. Jisung thinks of the cool silence of their flat with longing.

“Yes, let’s do that.” Minho’s mouth is still turned down at the corners. “I wanted to check it out though.”

“We can go next week,” Jisung says, twining his hand with Minho’s.

A smile breaks on Minho’s face. “I like our dates,” he announces, “and I like it when we plan dates.” Before Jisung can reply, Minho smacks a kiss on his cheek. “I like spending time with you.”

“Wow. Big feelings again,” Jisung snorts. “I thought we had our moment twenty minutes ago.”

“Twenty minutes is too long ago,” Minho jokes. His cheekbones are bunched under twinkling, crinkled eyes. “And I had to match your sudden, unexpected outpouring of feelings.”

“You know that it isn’t a competition, right?”

Minho puffs out his chest, pretends to roll up his sleeves with a haughty sniff. “Only if you don’t have any imagination.”

Jisung blinks a few times. He knows he’s rising to the bait, but he goes along with it anyway. “I think my build-up was better than yours.”

“So what,” a wave of Minho’s hand nearly sends his phone flying out of his hands. “You weren’t expecting me to say anything, and therefore it was sweeter and more wholesome.”

“Now, you look here…” Jisung’s words are choked with laughter, “you can't just praise yourself, you have to present arguments –”

Minho interrupts him, “ – as if you offered any arguments. You basically said that it was good.”

“Then let me tell you how I spent the entire day building up to that moment.”

───────

The tiny restaurant near their apartment is where Jisung had first shared a meal with Minho. It had seemed so awkward then, his aloof, handsome roommate inviting himself along like that. It had been his ploy, Minho later admitted, to somehow talk to Jisung, who kept to himself and his friends. Now, the sight of Minho studying the wall mounted menu under the sickly yellow glow of the lamps is a frequent, familiar one.

The two ends of a week are always punctuated by a visit here. They probably come here much too often, but it has taken the comforting hues of tradition, and thus never feels boring.

Minho turns, begins to list options. He trails off with an arch of his brow. “What’s with the smile?”

Jisung dims the wattage of his smile, it is difficult to snuff out his fondness just as quick. Minho’s other brow climbs to his forehead, too. “Nothing,” Jisung shakes his head. “I was just gloating about my victory.”

“I _let_ you win because you are cute. I couldn’t stand your whining.” Minho’s indignation is adorable. He tries to look unbothered, but his ears give him away like they always do.

Jisung wants to latch on to him and stay pressed against his side till sunrise. He pats Minho’s cheek. “Yes, yes. I believe you. You didn’t get flustered and stop speaking for three whole minutes or anything.”

“Ugh. You’re a menace.” This is one of Minho’s frequent grumblings, and he always speaks as if he isn’t just as much of a menace. “Just tell me what you want,” Minho swats Jisung’s hand away. He crosses his arms and tries to glower. But his mouth is twitching, and it gives him away.

Jisung tells him, heart thrumming with contentment, and eyes roving over Minho’s face even as he speaks. He takes out his phone when Minho goes to the counter to place their order. He impassively scrolls through a group chat. He is anchored for once. Rooted in each moment that is passing, and just… warm, dammit. He is not going to let the argument raging in his project group ruin this.

He ends up complaining to Minho anyway as they walk home. Minho in turn tells him about his research project. Jisung promises Minho that he won’t include a qualitative component to his own project, and makes soothing noises as Minho grumbles about the pain of transcribing interviews.

Their conversation meanders to groceries and Jisung agrees to pick up stuff the next morning.

“No fruits though. Mom sent two dozen oranges.” By this point they’re waiting for the lift, and Minho presses the button to call it. “It’s an invasion of oranges.”

“It’s an invasion of love~” Jisung gets a pointed poke to his stomach for this comment. He makes sure to tickle Minho once they’re inside the lift.

Jisung’s heart is hummingbird fast. He wants this beat to be inked in his memory for a long time. So that even if he forgets the brightness of Minho’s eyes, and the delight at its corners as he manages to gain the upper hand; even if he forgets the warmth of Minho's fingers as he sneaks them under Jisung’s shirt, and the burnished colour of his hair as he leans down to kiss him, Jisung will still know that he felt this way on a random Saturday.

 _Today is a good day_ , he thinks as he deepens the kiss.

**Finish.**

**Author's Note:**

> One line summary: they are very, very much in love with each other but in gratuitous detail.
> 
> Thank you for taking time to read this. I hope you enjoyed it and I would love to hear your comments about the writing and such <3  
>  **|[twitter](https://twitter.com/liquorish_roots)|**  
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